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The new year is a time for reflection and looking towards the future. We hope the past year brought you growth personally and professionally, and want to wish you clarity in setting goals for the year to come. Shana tova!

Businesses that fail to nurture their leads are almost certainly wasting marketing budget, especially for businesses with long sales cycles. As Ramel Levin, VP of Marketing at CloudEndure notes, 75% of leads will not convert immediately and need to be nurtured. More

How do you promote your brand and share your company message? Most of the time, we rely on the expected channels of Twitter or the tedious effort of engaging with those top influential people in the industry, hoping that one day they’ll share your latest blog post. What many companies overlook is their most powerful marketing asset, the employees, who are right within arm’s reach. But with everyone’s busy lives, impossible schedules and over-flowing inboxes, how can you expect your employees to take the time to share your company message and become your next “brand ambassador?”

We found one company with an amazing success story behind their recently launched employee advocacy program. Here, we interview Liz Pedro who initiated Mitel’s advocacy program and saw stellar results beginning on day one. More

A few months ago, I stepped into our CEO’s office with an idea that had been floating around in my head for a few days. The premise was simple: What if we could build a simple framework to share all of the knowledge and expertise we’re accumulating as digital marketers? Wouldn’t Pravda Media Group be a better place if everyone could freely and openly share their insights?

One of the biggest challenges marketers face is putting the right systems in place in order to build a sales and marketing machine. The speakers we will hear from at this #B2BTalks are considered leaders in this aspect. We’ll talk about the strategy and processes put into place in their companies, as well as the talents and technology required to build the bridge between sales and marketing.

Join us Sunday, December 8 at 6pm and meet with other B2B marketers. There will be a Q&A following the panel – we encourage an open discussion so get your questions ready! Refreshments will be served. For those who can’t make it, you can follow the conversation at #B2BTalks. More

YouTube rolled out a shiny new feature: embeddable Subscribe buttons. This has been done in an effort to get viewers to subscribe to more channels (thereby spend more time on the service).

According to the YouTube Developer Doc, “The YouTube Subscribe Button lets you add a one-click Subscribe button to any page. The button lets people subscribe to your YouTube channel without having to leave your site to either log in to YouTube or confirm their subscriptions” In practice, this is just as easy as embedding videos onto ones site, only in this case it will be a one-click Subscribe button that makes it easier for fans to follow on YouTube.

This could work wonders for B2B’s and B2C’s, as it would help boost subscription rates when used effectively. Thankfully, this is available for both free and paid YouTube channels. What’s more- users can choose between basic buttons, and fancier ones which feature company logos.

In typical Google/YouTube fashion, they are staying one step ahead of the game by discouraging channel owners from dishonestly inflating numbers on YouTube. Channel owners can’t offer or promote prizes or rewards of any kind in exchange for clicking on a YouTube Subscribe button – so there goes that tactic.

In an effort to position itself as the leading destination for B2B content, LinkedIn started to roll out Sponsored Updates in late July. These are similar in fashion to sponsored posts on Twitter, and promoted pages on Facebook – allowing sponsored content to be pushed to specific audiences. Sure, it may get pricy for smaller B2B’s, but it would be worth the investment nonetheless.

LinkedIn takes pride in offering “content marketing in the world’s only professional feed,” and it would certainly be beneficial for B2B’s to consider using this as a part of their marketing and outreach efforts. In addition to the typical geo-targeting options, publishers can also select audiences by company, title, job function, and seniority levels. These updates could be promoted in 20 languages across 200 countries, with the potential to reach 225 million active members who regularly update their profile/feed.

Sponsored Updates will work wonders for brand awareness, and directing traffic towards press releases, job postings, and product pages on company websites. It would also increase the reach of thought-leadership pieces on company blogs, white papers and webinars. B2B’s could also strategically use Sponsored Updates for crowdsourcing purposes, and for lead generation. Targeted audiences would have access to social options to comment/like/share the post, in addition to follow the company in one click.

What do you think about Sponsored Updates? Do you think it would take off? Some big names already have their fair share of success stories. Here is the official link to get started with Sponsored Updates.

Marketers are facing major challenges when they need to make decisions based on data that is in separate silos internally, and not integrated with the outside world. Colabo launched yesterday, solving this problem by enabling marketers to connect the dots between external data sources, like social networks, and internal sources, like the App Store. Check it out!

This Anne Taintor-esque video got me thinking about how our romantic relationships have evolved in the digital age.

Allow me to break it down:

A typical love story circa 1991

Boy meets Girl. Boy asks for Girl’s phone number. Boy calls Girl. Boy leaves message. Girl calls Boy (after waiting a day just to make him sweat.) Boy asks Girl out. Girl says yes. Boy meets Girl at the movies. Or the mall. Or the arcade. Boy and Girl hold hands. Boy kisses Girl. Girl goes home to write in her diary and draw pink hearts next to Boy’s name. Girl stares at the phone willing it to ring… (Boy is probably doing the same.)

This is how it was back in my day.

No Instant Messages. No text messages. We had conversations voice-to-voice, and in person. You know, when we weren’t gazing romantically at each other (and by gazing romantically at each other, I really mean making out.)

Romance blossomed over the phone – tone, inflection, nuance were carried through live wire. The phone made it easy to feel connected and stay connected. And ultimately, to disconnect: All my breakups were done over the phone. Sure, while face-to-face is the “mature” way to go, when feelings are fragile, the phone made it less messy.

Boy Facebook-stalks Girl. (Or Girl Facebook-stalks Boy) Boy pokes Girl. (Or Girl pokes Boy.) Boy pokes Girl. Girl pokes Boy. Etc… ad nauseum. (And all of this without a steak dinner!) Boy and Girl finally get around to friending eachother. (And it’s about time! I mean, after all, they’ve been poking for a while now.) Boy and Girl chat on Facebook into the wee hours of the morning for several nights. (They share a lot of LOL’s.) Boy and Girl exchange phone numbers. Boy texts Girl. (Or Girl texts Boy.) Boy texts Girl. Girl texts Boy. Boy pocket-dials Girl. Boy texts Girl: “w2ho” Girl knows this is text-speak for “Want to hang out?” and she replies “wen” (because typing that extra letter and the question mark take waaay too much effort and/or make it look like she’s trying too hard.) Boy and Girl go on a date. Boy and Girl check in on FourSquare. Boy and Girl change respective Facebook relationship statuses. And the chats and the messages and the pokes fly over cyberspace.

“XOXO” and “I <3 U” fill the spaces on the screen.

Until they don’t.

Breaking up is hard to do. But on Facebook, with a click and a drag, it becomes very easy. Remember when Matt Damon blew off Minnie Driver on Oprah? Well, it can happen to anyone – on a smaller scale, but still. When a relationship ends, 1123 of your closest friends will know about it. But the good news is that hottie from your econ class who is lurking your page knows it, too.